


First Times

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Animal Death, Awkward Boners, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic?, Grief/Mourning, Kissing, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 10:01:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13245864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: Summary: Shane gets out of bed on a rainy Saturday morning and kisses the farm girl for the first time.A/N: I've been playing a lot of Stardew Valley over the holiday break and my first years almost finished. I like Shane. So I wrote some Shane and I might write more.





	First Times

It was raining the day Shane kissed her. It was raining and she was crying. It wasn’t ideal.

He’d been having one of his bad days on top of it all. If he’d have told anyone about it - not that he would’ve because he’d never been that kind of guy - no one would understand how much the kiss meant to him. How special it was. Plus, no one would have believed him anyway. The cute farmer girl with a guy like him? Pretty shocking she even called him her friend...

Even Marnie, who had been trying and failing to play matchmaker with them the past three seasons, wouldn’t believe it. But no one was gonna know about that kiss anyway, at least not from him. 

His Aunt had asked him in passing, because she was late to a breakfast date with Lewis, to deliver a sack of feed and a tin of freshly churned butter to the year-old farm. Shane would have employed his usual excuse to lay in bed, maybe move to the sofa if he was so inclined but there was no ulterior motive in her bright eyes, just the spark of someone in a rush while being disgusting happy. Kinda funny that the one time Marnie wasn’t trying for some end game that all her so-called dreams would come true - that the farmer girl would be into him. 

All it had taken was a moment of mutual insight from her as tears slipped down her rain-soaked cheeks that Shane said ‘fuck it’ and took the plunge. It had all the makings of being wrong… so wrong of him to presume but it was right. It was one of the few things in his life that he could look back on with fondness and say he’d taken a gamble and won. He’d looked into her eyes and took the hint. 

That drenched morning when he got to her farm, sans umbrella and soaked to the bone by the summer shower, she wasn’t in her newly remodeled ranch house like he’d have expected. 

For more than he should have, he hovered by her door, peering through the window into her living room where the weather forecast was still on. A fuzzy orange tail twitched behind the sofa; a cat enjoying the dry warmth of indoors where he should have been. Still in bed, maybe back to sleep after a quick jerk session to feel a little something before he let another rut take hold. 

On the wall, a clock with a raccoon tail ticked the time as the tv repeated the weather on mute but the farmer girl didn’t come dashing out when he knocked again, getting more grumpy than devoid. 

Rain all through Saturday and Sunday with cloudy skies expected throughout the week. What did farmers do in summer without sunshine? Usually, they stayed inside and took a day off - it’s what he would have done had he been a farmer… not that he would have. A Shane farm would be a sad sack of shit with mud everywhere. 

He glanced behind him, squinted through the rain at her sprawling acres of crops and fruit trees. A pang of longing hit him but it faded quickly. 

Through the rivers of rain running down the window, Shane spotted a bundle of yarn on a big granny chair. The start of some blanket or sweater was draped over the armchair beside it, looking warm enough to make Shane hate the weather even more. 

Of course, he knew she did stuff like that… knitting or whatever, but the sight of an unfinished project - of imagining her in some nightgown or pajama shorts, crocheting - got him feeling more of those longing twitches. It was weird, but as he licked rainwater off his lips and hugged the chicken feed, Shane had the worst urge to walk around the house and see if the curtains were open on her bedroom window. It was creepy, wanting to see where she slept, but the thought lingered like a brain itch as he turned and walked to the barn. 

She wasn’t there either, nor the stables, and after dropping her feed off under the thatched overhang by the shed, Shane followed the slick cobblestone pathway to the chicken coop with the butter tin in one hand and his rain-heavy cargo pocket in the other. The water was weighing them down, proving it was time for a belt now that he’d dropped about ten pounds thanks to his beer-less diet of sparkling water.

Everything was wet and oddly muddy as if whoever had crossed them last had been gummed up in mucky boots. There was a dislodged heft of earth a few feet away, filling with murky rain and a small hill of dirt a little ways from that which was smoothing out under the downpour. He barely gave it a second thought except one of initial acknowledgment.

Shane spat rainwater out his mouth, feeling his mood mimic the weather and traversed the pathway with a deepening scowl. 

The stones were a broken ass waiting to happen, but he’d been sober for three weeks - dry nearly two months before his last tumble off the wagon and then a full season before that other relapse - so… his chances of ending up slipping and making a fool of himself were slimmer than usual. He was, however, drenched to the bone when he finally shouldered the coop door open, only to nearly trip right over a dirty, wet shovel.

“Fuck!” He cursed, feet tangling, only catching a glimpse of the living shape close by the fodder before kicking the metal death trap across the floor into a scattering pile of hay. 

The fuck - he’d nearly broken his face from her haphazard tools. The stones, the dirt and its lubed up wetness… now this!? A flicker of anger - of indignation - bloomed where the void had been most of the morning, but it sank back as quickly as it’d come once again. Coming and going, but never staying. 

So much for emotions today...

Silence ate away the rain hammering the coop, reminding him she was there… and he’d cursed in front of her again as a mean drunk would. As the sick realization hit him, Shane swallowed. 

She was turned towards him on the floor, in the hay. He wanted to rewind, go back to the moment he grumbled an ‘okay’ to Marnie and instead tell her ‘no, go away’ so he wouldn’t be here right now. For a quick second, he hated the farmer girl for witnessing his outburst before Shane lowered his head in that same shame he often felt after a bender.

“Sorry about that,” he muttered, tugging at the soggy hem of his Saturday ‘who-gives-a-shit’ shirt, “... thought your shovel was going to murder me. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“Worse ways to die, I suppose,” came her voice; swollen with emotion. The tickle of an old sob pulled his eyes away from the wet wooden boards, watching as she dab at her cheek with the back of a floppy sleeve. 

The farmer girl - with her damp braided hair folded over one bare shoulder and an oversized blue sweater that barely proved she wore shorts on - gave him a wet glance and then another before a fat tear squeezed out one eye. She smiled through it. That warm, pink smile that had got him to quit drinking the first time, and the second and third and every time after… it tore at his heart like dead, brown vines. A scythe through decay. More of those firecrackers of emotion. 

Was she upset? She’d been crying. Since when did she -

“Barney’s dead,” she stated, trying to beam a smile that failed when more tears spilled down her cheeks. That full lower lip quivered in despair as a portly chicken sat down in her lap, tussling its feathers until fresh down bloomed around its beak and proceeded to snooze there.

Console, his mind supplied. Empathy and comfort. What the fuck was he supposed to do again? This was where he was supposed to prove their friendship - was supposed to hug her and say he was sorry for her loss, but his feet wouldn’t budge and his throat felt clogged. 

Shit. 

Shane saw an image of her with Marnie in the ranch coop, holding the warm brown egg that had hatch it. Barney was her first chicken… and sorta his favorite too… and it was dead? How? 

He looked around, noting the muddy boots by the wall behind him, the three chickens clucking around her thighs and that shovel. That wet, filthy tool… She used that to bury him. She would, wouldn’t she? Yeah, the girl ate meat and anything else that tasted good but these were her chickens; her family. Of course she buried Barney, and Shane had kicked the shovel that dug the hole across the floor like it didn’t mean anything. 

“I did it again-“ and then he scowled, itching at his wet stubble with a self-deprecating groan. He tried again, “I mean…” but came up empty. 

Even the chickens were doing a better job at the whole compassion thing than he was. 

“I…” he started again and stopped.

No, no more phrases that started with ‘I’ or ‘me.’ The therapist she helped him find stressed empathy and humility. Shit didn’t always have to be about him. The world didn’t exist to fuck him over. This wasn’t a situation that had anything to do with him… this was about her. Even if it hurt to pull up his compassion when the well was dry and crumbled, Shane did his best for her. 

With a stiff expression, he looked at her sitting there with a bag of sunflower seeds, her remaining chickens either pecking at the open spillage or sleeping beside her. Hoping he was doing the right thing, he flipped the heater on, grabbed the shovel out of the hay and set it against the wall before toeing off his drenched shoes. 

She was resting a hand on the chicken in her lap, head hanging down as the bare bulb overhead caught the moist glisten of rainwater in her hair and that bare shoulder.

She was painfully attractive in her grief, but if he was good at anything it was feeling nothing, so he channeled that as he bent down and sat his ass across from her. Her eyes flickered up to him from beneath a few wet strings of loose hair but fell back down to her remaining flock. A tear fell off the top of her nose and she sniffled up snot and more tears. She didn't even look over when he sat the butter next to her.

No more ‘I’ phrases, he told himself and gulped audibly before resting a hand on her damp arm. 

It wasn’t the first time they’d touched. Her hugs were sporadic but not infrequent and there had been times where she’d needed a hand on the farm after he got laid off when Joja Mart closed and brushed dirt off his clothes or sweaty neck. One time, their knees had touched after taking a break from land clearing by the docks… 

This was different, though - this time it was him who’d initiated the contact. 

The awkwardness that Shane himself felt was absent in her. There were tears pooling in her eyes still, but she didn’t stiffen like he had all those times she’d touched him. If anything, her shoulders deflated; neck went to jelly. A little, tiny sound of sadness breezed between the few thin lines of hair before the chicken in her lap startled and suddenly Shane had her arms wrapped around his soggy shoulders and her face in his neck. Hot breath exhaling in the rain-slick skin. Her warm lips on his throat, not kissing, but there all the same, send a shiver down his spine. 

If he’d done this to her… 

“I’ve never buried anything before,” she admitted. 

Those full lips spoke against his skin, filling the empty void in his chest until something tight and hot twisted his lower stomach. Lust popped up and stayed. Wrong time to get an erection. Worst fucking time for it really, but his body was still suffering from muscle memory and she was only pulling herself closer. 

His cock started to stiffen, poking up against the scratchy, damp material of his cargo shorts and when her knees shifted, lifting as if to settle herself in his lap - closer and closer - Shane grabbed her waist in a panic.

“I just-just,” she was talking but Shane was sweating as she pulled her face out of his neck to stare at him with pinch brows, wet eyes and quivering lips. 

The rain outside turned on its side, pelting the little window panes loud enough to make the chickens ‘bock’ and dance around them nervously. “I came in to feed them and - I didn’t know what had happened. She was just gone. Passed in the night. I don’t-”

Her chest lurched and somehow her hands had found their way to his chest, up around his threadbare shirt collar; fingers inside the wet cotton. 

Shane swallowed, watching her mouth thin, as a million nerves started to explode where she touched him. A moist, pink tongue darted out to wet her lips - to lick off the salty tears that spilled - and he couldn’t help moistening his own. 

She didn’t seem to notice the way he held her away from his lap with the hard, utterly inappropriate dick, aimed up at her. What a great fucking time to do this. Right now, of all times. 

Thankfully, outside her own sadness, there wasn’t much of anything she noticed… except…

Suddenly, her gaze raked over his soaked shirt, down the clingy material where the shrinking beer pudge was leaving him more like he was in his early twenties. 

Wet eyes traveled down past his navel, glimpsed his groin before meeting his eyes again. There was no way she’d seen a tent. His cargo shorts were pulled taut by his crossed legs, but that didn’t help another stab of shame when she blinked and tried for another smile. “Maybe-maybe it happened when she was asleep. I can’t… do you think I did something wrong? Maybe she-”

“...umm, you know it could have been anything,” he finally said, watching her eyes uncloud for a second before they lowered again in sadness. With his fingertips denting on her lower back and that weird run down she’d given him still warming his skin, Shane gave her a sympathetic look. 

It took him more than a few seconds to attempt a consolation. “Are you going to be okay?” Was all he managed, but something about the question worked. 

She nodded, licked her lips again and sighed.

“Yeah, yea… I’ll be alright. Never had pets before or animals to take care of. I guess… guess it reminded me of how sheltered I still am. Death is a part of life and,” her fingers loosened on his collar slipping down past his chest to rest limply in her lap, “and uh, sorry for getting all touchy-feely. I know that bothers you.”

“It’s okay.” But it wasn’t fair to keep holding her if she wasn’t holding him, so Shane tugged his palms off her waist, ready to end another cherished moment of physical contact when she hiccuped and fell back into him; arms around his neck and a fist between his shoulder blades. One knee went between his legs and she was already in his lap before he could sputter an excuse. 

“It’s shitty,” she said into that spot on his neck again, “but that’s part of life.”

The chickens kept clucking and the rain continued pounding and his cheeks were on fucking fire, but she didn’t say a single word about the erection pushing against her thigh, nor the awkward hands he put on her back or the way his heart was no doubt racing to a timely death against her nose. The stress of having her so close - so damn close - made his tongue swell for a drop of beer, just something to wet his throat; quench the nerves. Dull the terror and panic and shame and soften his dick up some.

A small, fat chicken started pecking from the spilled bag of sunflower seeds. Shane watched it out the corner of his eye as her arms squeezed him hard before pulling back and just like that they were where they were a few moments ago; staring at each other.

“This weather… it makes the world feel so small,” she told him, legs folded in his lap, surrounded by chickens and the claustrophobic sound of rain. “I like it - it fits the mood and today I’m resigning myself to be sad. That’s okay, right?”

“More than okay,” Shane responded, lost in the way her lips pulled into a wan smile, lost in the way she was ignoring the apparent line of his dick against her… just - just lost.

A strange, hypnotic pull tugged him closer. His fingers spread across her warm, wet sweater, pulling her closer. 

Those eyes - so moist and open - blinked at him, narrowing in mutual understanding. It was like they’d both said yes without saying anything and even though his stomach flipped with nervous energy, Shane reached forward an inch, saw her lips part in invitation, and kissed her.

Fuck… that’s all his brain could backfire and then when she returned the touch everything lit up. Soft lips, warm and wet, plucked at his lips as he leaned in deeper, inhaling noisily through his nose. All that plushness opened up against his mouth and he tasted heat and breakfast tea with mint. Hoping she got the flavored sparkling water he’d chugged that morning and not the pizza he had last night. 

She tasted too good to worry about it for long and one swift lick to his lower lip flipped everything upside down. Had he ever kissed anyone sober? - had he ever come away from a kiss with anything but the taste of someone else's beer breath?

Shane groaned the second her tongue flicked against his own and broke the kiss with a wet pant. 

She twisted her fingers into his messy hair and gave him a tug when he kept his distance. He couldn't remember when her hands had moved up from around his back or why they were jerking him back down, down and in, but followed weak and desperate to feel something. He stroked the bare ball of her shoulder, curled his nails into the skin and drug her in.

It wasn’t a very timid kiss. Nothing like the ones he’d fantasized about when he was trying to be realistic about his chances with her, but it wasn’t the nasty, hectic kind he imagined when jerking off to her under the sheets with the door locked either. Some weird mix of the two, but nothing like he could have dreamed. 

The slick slip and smack of her lips - of his - were lost in the noisy downpour outside the coop, but he felt every frantic peck and delve of her tongue. The nip of teeth was slow and molten; melting the last bit of cold from his bones and all the while she clung to him like a life raft.

He could have worried about a hundred things while they kissed. Did his stubble itch her skin? - what about his breath or the lack of any kissing skills? But none of that shit settled in his mind. 

After another gentle bit to his lower lip, Shane couldn’t do it anymore. His heart was beating so hard and his cock was one long line of pounding stiffness… and he didn’t want to end up realizing she wanted more than kisses only to have their first time happen in the chicken coop where Barney, her favorite chicken, had died not but a few hours ago. 

It was hard, but Shane tugged her lips back with a hand on her jaw and thankfully, she let him go this time. 

Hot breath puffed against his chin, tickling the prickly hair he should have shaved off that morning, but he hadn’t known this was going to happen. Never in a hundred fucking years would he have thought that he was gonna grow a pair and boldy kiss her on such a shitty morning. 

Had he taken advantage of her pain? Was this… had he-

“Hey. Shane,” she pulled him away from the ledge for the thousandth time it seemed, cupping his scratchy cheeks and smiled, “don’t turn this into a Shane-shame-fest, okay? Just let it be.”

That kiss, he thought, frowning. He was set to find something to twist into a dark spire - something wrong about what he’d done, but she kissed him again, just a little peck, and Shane melted against her.

“Fine,” he mumbled, holding her loose but close while the rain kept on pouring down and the chickens clucked along like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Life moved on. Death came and went but life would always move on. She was right, always had been… but still too humble to accept it.

No one would get it if he told them, but that kiss…

“I’m sorry about Barney,” he said, realizing that some ‘I’ phrases had their place. 

Lips that were kissed a deep pink broke into a broad smile. A final tear slid down her cheek - an old tear that’d been hanging on her eyelash since that first press of lips - and with a hard hug that took his breath away, she sighed, letting it all out in one go.

“Thanks,” she breathed and Shane plucked her up closer, holding her as the rain kept coming down and the chickens finished off the sunflower seeds and another feeling of accomplishment filled his chest. This time, when emotion bubbled up in his chest, it stayed there.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a spur of the moment kind of thing, but I think it turned out alright for a quickie. I only hit Shanes four heart event recently so I apologize if he's out of character. If any of you have the time, please let me know what you think! Thanks as always for reading.
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